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mglyptostroboides t1_iyyszwd wrote

Reply to comment by acm2033 in Why Roman Egypt was such a strange province by oni64

>They already had agriculture (which was very different than the rest of the Roman world), language, a system of government, and economy that worked.

I'm sorry, but I'm confused by this. Could you clarify what you mean? I'm fairly certain that many of the other places the Romans conquered already practiced farming before the Romans conquered them. And what do you mean by "language" here? Surely you mean written language, right? Because people have been speaking for tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands!) of years.

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stormearthfire t1_iyyzalm wrote

Egyptian farming is very much tied to the flood plains of the Nile river and it's annual innudation. The innudation process enriches the soil and determines the quality of the harvest.

Source: played a shit ton of Pharoah city sim back in the days

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mglyptostroboides t1_iyzcbzd wrote

I wasn't asking about the parenthetical about Egyptian agriculture being different from the rest of Roman territory. It was the implication from how that comment was worded that Rome introduced the very concept of agriculture to most of the places they conquered which is extremely wrong.

In fact, the whole comment was worded in such a way that it seems like the author literally thought Rome was going into places and introducing the very concepts of farming, language (?!???! what?!) and government....

See:

>Instead of being a Roman settlement, Egypt...

(contrasting Egypt with the rest of Roman territory)

and

>No need for the Romans to come in and establish things that were already there.

Does this mean the author of the comment literally thought people in, say, pre-Roman Gaul were just walking around, grunting wordlessly until the Romans taught them Latin? I'm pretty certain that's not what they meant, but you have to admit it was worded very ambiguously. However, in light of the fact that they (apparently?) assume the Romans introduced agriculture to most of their empire, I'm not sure what to think...

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Pyranze t1_iyzfdv4 wrote

I think they meant that the Romans introduced their versions of these things to those areas which would better integrate them into the Empire as a whole, whereas Egypt already had institutions and infrastructure that the Romans could use without issue.

Edit: re-reading it, I'm pretty sure that's what they meant. They said "the Egyptians already had [list of stuff] that worked" so I assume they meant the stuff worked for the Romans.

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mglyptostroboides t1_iyzfzp4 wrote

Ah! That changes a lot. I parsed that as "[things] and and economy that worked]". As if the "that worked" was referring to just the economy not the rest of the things they listed.

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